Victorian Justice

TERRY KIM

Summary:
The Victorian Justice system does reflect somewhat to today's system. The Victorian court system is quite straightforward and are short. The courts has a prosecutor who is normally the victim of the incident or the police that had caught the defendant. These courts are public in-city courts. Lawyers are rarely in courts due to high price they cost. Therefore leaving the defendants to defend for themselves. Not only did they not have lawyers, but had no legal help or insurance, again due to the cost. There were witnesses, but the judge had to rely on them to tell the truth of what they had saw. Making these courts not perfect. If the defendants were found guilty by the judge, then they were either sentenced to death by hanging or transportation. Transportation was the moving to prisoners to undeveloped countries to live, somewhat like a jail. As time went on, Victoria started to increase in crime rates; forcing them to start the creation and use of jails for small crimes like stealing onions. Before, a person that had stole onions was sentenced to death showing that it is very harsh. These prisons were were much like the western prison with metal bars and a cell. These were found in huge buildings and had small rooms, but these rooms were even worse due to the large number of people that were held captive in the prisons. There was a separate prison just for the debtors of Victoria. These prisons were even worse, but they had gotten better as time went on. This sudden increase of crimes was caused by the many people that moved into the city and also triggering a lot of poverty throughout the city. The number of crimes per year rose to around 20,000. These people that committed crimes must be punished, but the people thought it was too harsh and had started rioting against what they did. In return, the government started making the prisons better.


Visuals:

Hanger
Hanger
















Court
Court





For Further Research:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lesson24.htm
This site is reliable because site has little bias in it as the author is also sponsored by a company called nationalarchives of the UK. Another thing is that it says .gov so this governmental so it should be trusted. The audience is for educated people that wish to find out about Victorian prisons.

http://www.victorianlondon.org/prisons/fleetprison.htm
The site gives multiple reliable sources and sponsors of the writing in the site for example The Illustrated London News. A few of these do have the authors name within it. It is by .org so they aren't looking for a profit by me reading this information.


Presentation:



WORKS CITED
Jackson, Peter. “Rough Justive-Victorian Style.” BBC, 2009 Web. 10 Feb. 2010
“Victorian Crime & Punishment.”E2BN, n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2010
Victorian Court. N.d. Online, California. Rousso & Jackel. Web. 19 Feb. 2010.
Victorian Hanging. N.d. Online. The history of judicial hanging in Britain 1735 - 1964.. Web. 19 Feb. 2010.